Radio Berkman

Jonathan Jackson is a co-founder of Blavity Inc., a technology and media company for black millennials. Blavity’s mission is to "economically and creatively support Black millennials across the African diaspora, so they can pursue the work they love, and change the world in the process." Blavity has grown immensely since their founding in 2014 — among other things, spawning five unique sites, reaching over 7 million visitors a month, and organizing a number of technology, activism, and entrepreneurship conferences. Jonathan Jackson is also a Joint Fellow with the Nieman Foundation and the Berkman Klein Center for Internet & Society for 2018-2019. During his time here, he says, he is looking for frameworks and unique ways to measure black cultural influence (and the economic impact of black creativity) in the US and around the world. Jonathan sat down with the Berkman Klein Center’s Victoria Borneman to talk about his work. Music from this episode: "Jaspertine" by Pling - Licensed under Creative Commons Attribution Noncommercial (3.0) More information about this work, including a transcript, can be found here: https://cyber.harvard.edu/story/2019-01/get-know-berkman-klein-fellow-jonathan-jackson

Berkman Klein Center interns sat down with 2018 Berkman Klein Center Fellow Amy Zhang, to discuss her work on combating online harassment and misinformation as well as her research as a Fellow.

According to a recent Pew Research Center study, Instagram is the second most popular platform among 13 to 17-year-olds in the US, after YouTube. Nearly 72 percent of US teenagers are on the image sharing platform. Our Youth & Media team looked at how teens are using Instagram to figure out who they are. While seemingly just a photo-sharing platform, users have molded Instagram into a more complex social media environment, with dynamics and a shared internal language almost as complex as a typical middle or high school. This episode was produced by Tanvi Kanchinadam, Skyler Sallick, Quinn Robinson, Jessi Whitby, Sonia Kim, Alexa Hasse, Sandra Cortesi, and Andres Lombana-Bermudez. More information about this work, including a transcript, can be found here: https://cyber.harvard.edu/story/2018-11/how-youth-are-reinventing-instagram-and-why-having-multiple-accounts-trending

We encounter algorithms all the time. There are algorithms that can guess within a fraction of a percentage point whether you’ll like a certain movie on Netflix, a post on Facebook, or a link in a Google search. But Risk Assessment Tools now being adopted by criminal justice systems all across the country - from Arizona, to Kentucky, to Pennsylvania, to New Jersey - are made to guess whether you’re likely to flee the jurisdiction of your trial, or commit a crime again if you are released. With stakes as high as this — human freedom — some are asking for greater caution and scrutiny regarding the tools being developed. Chris Bavitz, managing director of the Cyberlaw Clinic at Harvard Law School, helped draft an open letter to the state legislature of Massachusetts about Risk Assessment Tools, co-signed by a dozen researchers working on the Ethics and Governance of Artificial Intelligence. He spoke with Gretchen Weber about why we need more transparency and scrutiny in the adoption of these tools. Read the open letter here: https://cyber.harvard.edu/publications/2017/11/openletter

Even before Election Day, 2016, observers of technology & journalism were delivering warnings about the spread of fake news. Headlines like “Pope Francis Shocks World, Endorses Donald Trump For President” and “Donald Trump Protestor Speaks Out, Was Paid $3500 To Protest” would pop up, seemingly out of nowhere, and spread like wildfire. Both of those headlines, and hundreds more like them, racked up millions of views and shares on social networks, gaining enough traction to earn mentions in the mainstream press. Fact checkers only had to dig one layer deeper to find that the original publishers of these stories were entirely fake, clickbait news sites, making up false sources, quotes, and images, often impersonating legitimate news outlets, like ABC, and taking home thousands of dollars a month in ad revenue. But by that time, the damage of fake news was done - the story of the $3500 protestor already calcified in the minds of the casual news observer as fact. It turns out that it’s not enough to expect your average person to be able to tell the difference between news that is true and news that seems true. Unlike the food companies who create the products on our grocery shelves, news media are not required by law to be licensed, inspected, or bear a label of ingredients and nutrition facts, not that they should or could be. But the gatekeepers of news media that we encounter in the digital age - the social media platforms like Facebook and Twitter, search engines like Google, and content hosts like YouTube - could and should be pitching in to help news consumers navigate the polluted sea of content they interact with on a daily basis. That’s according to Berkman Klein Center co-founder Jonathan Zittrain and Zeynep Tufekci, a techno-sociologist who researches the intersection of politics, news, and the internet. They joined us recently to discuss the phenomenon of fake news and what platforms can do to stop it. Facebook and Google have recently instituted to processes to remove fake news sites from their ad networks. And since this interview Facebook has also announced options allowing users to flag fake news, and a partnership with the factchecking website Snopes to offer a layer of verification on questionable sites. For more on this episode visit: https://cyber.harvard.edu/interactive/radioberkman238 CC-licensed content this week: Neurowaxx: “Pop Circus” (http://ccmixter.org/files/Neurowaxx/14234) Photo by Flickr user gazeronly (https://www.flickr.com/photos/gazeronly/10612167956/)

The effects of surveillance on human behavior have long been discussed and documented in the real world. That nervous feeling you get when you notice a police officer or a security camera? The one that forces you to straighten up and be on your best behavior, even if you're doing nothing wrong? It's quite common. The sense of being monitored can cause you to quit engaging in activities that are perfectly legal, even desirable, too. It's a kind of "chilling effect." And it turns out it even happens online. Researcher Jon Penney wanted to know how the feeling of being watched or judged online might affect Internet users' behavior. Does knowledge of the NSA's surveillance programs affect whether people feel comfortable looking at articles on terrorism? Do threats of copyright law retaliation make people less likely to publish blog posts? Penney's research showed that, yes, the chilling effect has hit the web. On today's podcast we talk about how he did his research, and why chilling effects are problematic for free speech and civil society. Creative Commons photo via Flickr user fotograzio (https://www.flickr.com/photos/fotograzio/23587980033/in/photolist-BWoyEV-9sXJor-65C6vW-6HoVLi-CniMF-6Nmu25-a2vLRE-8EjbLa-5oemP4-2WnPir-68wN7D-qUAEUo-5WMdZy-CniTa-7SRuk-8wuiLW-ngSxx-auStar-7hHVm2-wZdZ-8WxYa6-6sHDJQ-8jMspN-fuEUnL-7F4sHR-npc6W-ngSz2-5YcUcm-oD777V-gyXGQj-9YzJSh-7A3qBq-gyXGYW-7mxD65-UnAYc-nsSXr-UnAHZ-oB5nAs-oD5sv1-omBFNa-BZRnk-4eugbA-4Mm6sa-4Mqh55-4Mqhju-4ikSHh-7RcGHj-6GAFVT-eApV5g-PgHJU) Find out more about this episode here: https://cyber.law.harvard.edu/node/99495

"George Lucas built a whole new industry with Star Wars." says Peter S. Menell, devoted science fiction fan and a professor at the UC Berkeley School of Law, who studies copyright and intellectual property law. "But what funds that remarkable company is their ways of using copyright." And he's right. A third of the profits LucasFilm pulls in from Star Wars has come from merchandising alone (http://www.forbes.com/sites/aswathdamodaran/2016/01/06/intergalactic-finance-how-much-is-the-star-wars-franchise-worth-to-disney/#74c6181b2d79). Not ticket sales, not DVDs, not video games or books. Toys, clothes, and weird tie-ins like tauntaun sleeping bags and wookie hair conditioner. But fans of Star Wars, and other stratospherically profitable creative universes, increasingly like to become creators within those universes. They write books, they make costumes, they direct spinoffs and upload them to YouTube. And sometimes they make money. How does law come into play when fans start to reinterpret intellectual property? We sat down with Menell to see where the tensions lie between the law, the courts, and the George Lucases of the world. Creative Commons music used in this episode: David Szesztay “Morning One” Broke For Free “Something Elated” Image courtesy of Flickr user: kalexanderson https://flic.kr/p/b7YWCD Subscribe to us on iTunes: https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/radio-berkman/id298096088?mt=2

In her article "The Secret Lives of Tumblr Teens," Elspeth Reeve tells the stories of some of Tumblr's most popular bloggers -kids who started their blogs in high school, made a ton of money and then inexplicably disappeared. In this episode we talk to Reeve about what she discovered when she went looking for these teens and what that can tell you about Tumblr and the teenage child stars of the Internet. Read Reeve's article here: https://newrepublic.com/article/129002/secret-lives-tumblr-teens Credits: Produced by Daniel Dennis Jones and Elizabeth Gillis Music by Dave Depper ("Rare Groove," "Sharpie," "Heartstrings"), Podington Bear ("Golden Hour") and Anitek ("Beta Blocker")

An artist, musician, or writer can’t just take another person's creation and claim it as their own. Federal law outlines how creators can and can’t borrow from each other. These rules are collectively called "copyright law," and essentially they give creators the exclusive right to copy, modify, distribute, perform, and display their creative works. Copyright law was originally created as an incentive. If creators aren’t worrying about whether someone might steal their work, they’re more likely to share their ideas with the public. This kind of sharing in turn helps to create more ideas, products, jobs, art, and whole industries. But even with copyright there are exceptions, or times where another artist can use a copyrighted work within getting the copyright holder’s permission. This safe zone is called "Fair Use." On this episode of the podcast we'll tell you everything you need to know about Fair Use in 6 minutes! Reference Section Photo courtesy of Fair Use/Fair Dealing Week Music courtesy of “Beta Blocker” -Anitek This week's episode was written by Leo Angelakos, Elizabeth Gillis, Daniel Dennis Jones, and Olga Slobodyanyuk, and edited by Elizabeth Gillis. Visit http://www.fairuseweek.org for even more information and resources on Fair Use Visit http://dlrp.berkman.harvard.edu/ for information on how to incorporate digital resources and fair use friendly practices in classrooms Special thanks this week to Andres Lombana-Bermudez of the Youth & Media Team, and Chris Bavitz of the Cyberlaw Clinic. For more information on this episode, including a transcript, visit http://cyber.law.harvard.edu

Are you really "you" online? We asked around for stories of digital alter egos — secret identities that people maintain on the web and try to keep separate from their real life identities. And it turns out there are lots of reasons — some good, some nefarious, some maybe both — to have an alternate persona online. On this episode we share stories of Catfishers, sock puppets, and digital doppelgangers. Reference Section Photo courtesy of carbonnyc Music courtesy of Podington Bear, MCJackinthebox, Blue Dot Sessions, and David Szesztay This week's episode produced by Daniel Dennis Jones and Elizabeth Gillis, with oversight from Gretchen Weber, and extra help from Adam Holland, Tiffany Lin, Rebekah Heacock Jones, Annie Pruitt, and Carey Andersen. More info on this story here: https://cyber.law.harvard.edu/node/99359

You've likely heard of Silk Road - the black market e-commerce hub that was shutdown in 2013 for becoming a magnet for vendors of illicit goods. But the story of its shutdown, and the investigation and trial that followed, is complicated enough that we need a guide. On this week's podcast Berkman Affiliate Hasit Shah brought together members of the Berkman community to speak with journalist and legal expert Sarah Jeong about what it was like to follow the Silk Road trial, and how the justice system copes when technology becomes a central part of a case. **** Listeners: We need your stories! Was there ever a time you used the web to be anonymous? Have you ever had a digital alter ego? If you’ve ever used a blog or a social media account to do something you didn't want connected to your real identity, we want to hear about it! We’ve set up a special hotline. All you have to do is call-in and tell your story on our voicemail, and we'll feature you on an upcoming episode. (617) 682-0376.

On your computer, you don’t ever really "take out the trash." Data doesn’t get picked up by a garbage truck. It doesn’t decompose in a landfill. It just accumulates. And because space is becoming less and less of an issue -- hard drive space keeps getting cheaper, and a lot of the apps we use have cloud storage anyway -- deleting our files is a thing of the past. We become Digital Hoarders. But what happens when we dig up those old files from years ago? Those old emails from our boyfriend or girlfriend, those old digital photos of family, those long rambling journal entries? On this week's podcast we talk to three researchers who all have different stories of digital hoarding, deleting, and recovering. Jack Cushman, Judith Donath, and Viktor Mayer-Schönberger talk about the value of remembering, the value of forgetting, and what we trust to our machines. More information on this episode, including links and credits, here: https://cyber.law.harvard.edu/node/99207

Facebook has had a lot of trouble with misogynistic speech. A few years ago, several women’s groups joined together to petition Facebook to work harder to block misogynistic pages, posts, and replies. At the time Facebook had strict standards against hate speech that was racist or anti-semitic — such speech would be blocked or taken down. These groups simply asked that gendered hate speech receive the same treatment. It was ironic, people said, that Facebook would commonly take down photos of women breastfeeding in response to complaints. Such content was deemed pornographic. But when Facebook users complained about comments that were misogynistic or harassing women, Facebook defended their decisions not to take them down. Their reasoning was one of semantics: Comments that described gendered violence didn’t actually threaten violence, they would argue. But — campaigners pointed out — misogynistic content actually is threatening, and creates an unsafe environment for speech. The campaigners won. But this isn’t the first time Facebook’s policies on censorship have been questioned by the public. And it won’t be the last. Right now, many European countries are asking Facebook to more strictly police hate speech on the platform. Jillian York is a writer and the director for International Freedom of Expression at the Electronic Frontier Foundation. She joined us to talk about the most recent debates about online speech, and why she questions whether these kinds of decisions should be left up to Facebook at all. Find more information on this episode, and subscribe to the podcast, here: https://cyber.law.harvard.edu/node/99190

A recent New York Times survey of the top 50 news sites showed that blocking ads while surfing their mobile news sites could save up to 14 megabytes per page loaded. 14 megabytes adds up to 30 seconds over 4G, and, if you’re on a restricted data plan, it would cost you 30 cents per page, all of that money going to your mobile provider, not to the content publisher. But for content publishers, and the ad providers that keep them alive, ad blocking poses a huge problem. Most of the commercial web as we know it exists because of advertising. When web users aren’t loading ads on their favorite ad-supported site, or otherwise paying the site - by subscribing, sponsoring, buying merchandise - the site is losing out on cash. And we’re talking serious cash. Digital ad spending is expected to reach $170.17 billion in 2015, with $69 billion - 40% of ad spending - in the mobile space. That’s a lot of money to spend on ads that might not even be seen. Ad block software is now in use by 200 million people around the globe. Doc Searls is a journalist and author who worked in the ad industry years ago. He has referred to ad blocking as “the biggest boycott in human history.” Radio Berkman producer Elizabeth Gillis spoke with Searls about what’s going on in the Ad Block Wars, and the part played by users, like you. More info on this episode, including links and credits, here: https://cyber.law.harvard.edu/node/99177

The current generation of search engines just tells you where to find information (returns a list of webpages). The next generation of search engines could anticipate what you are searching for, and actually find the information for you. In this conversation, Cynthia Rudin — associate professor of statistics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and director of the Prediction Analysis Lab — leads a brainstorming session to envision the future of the search engine. Challenges for the audience: * What are some cases where Google fails miserably? * Do you sometimes want to find the answer to a complicated type of question? How do you envision the answer being presented? * Do you have ideas of what the capabilities will be for the next generation of search engines? * What are some lessons we can learn from search engines from the past? This will be mainly audience participation. More information on this event here: https://cyber.law.harvard.edu/node/99130

Ethnographer Whitney Phillips embedded with the trolls of 4chan, observing for years how anonymous members of its subversive "b" forum memed, pranked, harassed, and abused, all for the "lolz" — the thrill of doing something shocking. The result: a book, "This is Why We Can’t Have Nice Things: Mapping the Relationship between Online Trolling and Mainstream Culture," that sheds light on how and why trolls do what they do. More than pushing the boundaries of taste within themselves — the "b" board recently made headlines for a case in which anonymous members allegedly goaded one of their own to cut off his own toe — troll behavior has had an incredibly broad impact on society. Trolling shaped the way social platforms and conversations on public forums take place. It is in no small part due to the spread of troll culture that comments sections, Facebook threads, and Twitter conversations can be minefields to productive conversation; the troll dialect is better equipped for shock and ironic bigotry than for sincerity, and a sincere conversation is just begging to be disrupted, especially when you disagree with your target. But while wrench-throwing can and has been a very important tool in online discourse, the web has started to outgrow trolls. In 2003 when 4chan was launched, there were under 700 million people on the Internet (predominantly higher income, younger, white, Western, male, and native English speakers), compared to 3.2 billion people today from many backgrounds. The incredible diversity of individuals all trying to have conversations on the same platforms has increased demand for civility, understanding, and inclusiveness, even as the conversations can seem more and more cacophonously problematic. And this threatens to make trolling less funny. Whitney joins us this week to talk about how troll culture has changed over the years, and what platforms can do to temper darker forms of discourse. For more on this week's episode visit: https://cyber.law.harvard.edu/node/99117

Bitcoin is having its 7th birthday, and its promise to change the way the world thinks about money is looking less and less hyperbolic. For one, the block chain technology underlying Bitcoin - the public ledger that makes the exchange transparent and accountable - is now being used to clean up Wall Street. A block chain-inspired service announced recently could open up the practice of lending stocks, and help prevent the kind of out-of-control short selling that led to the crash of 2008. But there are a lot people still don't understand about Bitcoin and block chain. We spoke with incoming Berkman Fellow Patrick Murck of the Bitcoin Foundation to explain. Flickr photo courtesy of btckeychain

Our full interview with Damon Krukowski referenced in this episode: https://soundcloud.com/radioberkman/pay-the-musician

The market for recorded music has undergone at least three major reinventions since the dawn of the Internet. At the turn of the century illegal downloading ate away at the music industry’s bottom line. Then the iTunes music store made it easy to buy music again, albeit disaggregated from its album form. Then along came streaming. The combination of ubiquitous Internet connectivity and bottomless consumer appetite for music has led to the success of applications like Pandora, Spotify, and Rdio which allow users to access entire music catalogs from virtually anywhere for next to nothing. Streaming has worked. In 2014 alone, at least 164 billion tracks were played across all streaming services according to Nielsen. And these streaming companies are raking in incredible amounts of cash from advertising and user subscription fees. Where does the money go? A recent study from Berklee College of Music’s Institute for Creative Entrepreneurship showed that 20 to 50 percent of music revenues might never make it to their rightful owners. In some cases artists might get 20% or less of the already tiny dollar amounts coming in from streaming services. But no one knows for sure. In a New York Times Op-Ed this week David Byrne asked the music industry to “open the black box,” and let everyone - the artists, the labels, the distributors, the listeners - know exactly where your money goes. On this week’s episode of the podcast we try to find out if we can crack into the stream and figure out where the money is flowing. CC photo courtesy of Flickr user hobvias sudoneighm Find a transcript of this episode here: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1b_vhqKu3OVVOOPddj64HZLQthe5k4pzinsF5XmYpJ7M/edit?usp=sharing

With 316 million users posting 500 million tweets a day, someone is bound to write an unoriginal tweet now and then. But there are some Twitter users whose entire existence relies completely on plagiarizing tiny jokes and relatable observations created by other Twitter users. Many plagiarizing accounts have follower numbers ranging from the thousands to the millions. Meaning their exposure can lead to career opportunities and sponsorships built on the creativity of others who are just getting started in their writing careers. So it was not without excitement that Twitter users found out last week that they can report plagiarizing accounts to Twitter under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, and have these copied tweets removed. But now we're forced to ask the question: are jokes protected under copyright? We asked Andy Sellars of Harvard Law School's Cyberlaw Clinic to weigh in. Flickr photo courtesy of wwworks Music from Podington Bear "Bright White

Reddit is sometimes called "the frontpage of the Internet." 170 million people a month help upload, curate, and make viral the cat photos, prank videos, and topical discussions that help fuel our neverending thirst for content. But recent moves by Reddit management to tighten up their content policy have threatened what is seen as the fundamentally "free speech" culture at Reddit. David Weinberger and Adrienne Debigare recently wrote about Reddit's crossroads for the Harvard Business Review (https://hbr.org/2015/07/how-reddit-the-business-lost-touch-with-reddit-the-culture). They joined us this week to talk about the culture of Reddit, free speech, and just who gets to make these decisions anyway? Flickr photo courtesy of fibonacciblue Music from Neurowaxx and Timo Timonen

Why are over 450 towns in the US building their own high speed Internet networks? Let's look at the example of the small town of Holyoke, Massachusetts. A few years back the town's mayor asked if the local cable or telephone companies wanted to build a fiber network to serve local schools and municipal buildings. The companies declined. The project was turned over to the local gas and electric utility, HG&E. Eighteen years later, HG&E have expanded this network to serve local businesses, and even other towns in the area. And it turns out this investment has more than paid for itself. On this week's episode we talk about what happens when municipal utilities and companies compete to provide local Internet services. Find out more about this story here: https://cyber.law.harvard.edu/node/98962

Public spaces function based on a varying give-and-take relationship with community members. Publicly supported media -- whether it be college radio, a local NPR station, cable access, or PBS -- shares the word "public," but traditionally doesn’t have the same relationship with members as other "public" institutions, for examples parks and libraries. On this episode of Radio Berkman we speak with Nieman Fellow Melody Kramer who is researching what it means to be a member of a public or community radio station. Kramer pulls from examples at stations all over the country of people supporting their public radio stations in non-financial ways, including code and story ideas. You can see some of what she’s uncovered on her github.

The International Labour Organization estimates that between forced labor and the commercial sex trade, more than 20 million men, women, and children are being trafficked internationally. The web plays a huge role in keeping trafficking industries viable, but new technology is also contributing to the efforts to police and prevent human trafficking and the child exploitation that results from it. As a PhD student in MIT’s HASTS program, Mitali Thakor is studying the problems associated with a tangled web of different institutions and companies trying to solve these problems. Thakor points to questions of surveillance and the rights of youth online in her discussion with Radio Berkman producer Elizabeth Gillis.

The more comfortable we get using digital platforms the more important it becomes to understand our relationships to them. From Facebook, to Fitbit, to Wikipedia, to networked games, and even to our schools and employers, the more we entrust our data to an outside platform, the more we have to ask the question: "How are they accountable to us?" For this week's podcast we spoke to four PhD candidates who are working with Microsoft Research. First, Ifeoma Ajunwa explains the tricky employers use big data collected from their employees. Then, Aleena Chia describes the unique system of governance that’s formed around the digital gaming world of Eve Online. Next, Berkman fellow Nathan Matias addresses the nuanced relationship between users and platforms where users create the content, like Wikipedia and Reddit. Finally, we speak with Stacey Blasiola about her research topic, “Newsfeed: Created by you?”

You may be familiar with a typical hack-day or hack-a-thon. Throw a group of developers and creators in a conference room for the weekend, and they'll come up with some amazing app or product to make life better for all of humankind. Radio Berkman recently stumbled on a hack-a-thon that turns hack-a-thons on their head. Last year a traveling event called Comedy Hack Day visited the MIT Media Lab in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Run by a group called Cultivated Wit, the goal of the hack day is to bring some laughs to the world of tech entrepreneurship. Instead of trying to attract millions of dollars in venture capital, they're bringing comedians and developers together to create prank inventions, satirical sites, and smart phone apps to poke fun at our increasingly tech-obsessed world.

A lot of personal information about you is completely invisible, intangible, and racing around cyberspace on a mission to pay your bills and geolocate your Facebook status. And, of course, this is useful and in a lot of ways really cool. But today on Radio Berkman we’re going to talk about the obstacles presented by a data-driven society. How can we keep mountains of information out of the wrong hands without compromising all the great benefits we get everyday? First, we talk to Bruce Schneier, a fellow at the Berkman Center and the author of Data and Goliath, The Hidden Battles to Capture Your Data and Control Your World. In this book, Schneier notes that the bulk collection of data isn’t going away, but changes in policy and public perception could allow citizens to have more control over how this information gets used. And in the second half of the show we talk to Josephine Wolff, who is also a Berkman Fellow and PhD candidate in the Engineering Systems Division at MIT studying cybersecurity and Internet policy. If you were concerned by the major credit card or email breaches of the last few years, you’ll want to hear this. Credits for this episode here: http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/mediaberkman/2015/06/08/radio-berkman-218-the-threats-and-tradeoffs-of-big-data/

Few sectors of the networked environment get a worse reputation for hate speech than online gaming. Competitive games with chat functions have always involved some level of trash talking. Slurs, shaming, and casual threats are part of the players' toolkit for riling up their opponent. But the toxicity levels of video game forums have reached a dangerous point. Unregulated and unchecked, many gaming networks have become zones where cyberbullying, misogyny, racism, and homophobic language are the norm. At least one gaming company has decided that this behavior should NOT be the norm. In 2012, Riot Games - makers of the insanely popular League of Legends (over 60 million players around the world) - hired a cognitive neuroscientist named Jeffrey "Lyte" Lin to "game" the game. Jeffrey is in charge of building social systems that de-incentivize bad behavior and bring about a more sportsman-like culture. On today's episode, we talk to Jeffrey about what the web can learn from how games are fighting hate speech. This is the first episode in a series on hate speech online. If you have any comments, or suggestions for future guests and topics, leave us a note in the comments, or send us a tweet!

In Radio Berkman 216 we tackle the web as we know it in 2014-2015. Hate speech online, freedom of speech online, censorship and surveillance online, and, of course, whether our smart machines are out to destroy us. All of these stories and more are part of this year's Internet Monitor report (https://thenetmonitor.org/research/2014), a collection of dozens of essays that track how we are changing the web and how the web is changing us. This episode's guests include: • Andy Sellars, author of "SOPA Lives: Copyright’s Existing Power to Block Websites and 'Break the Internet'" (http://medium.com/internet-monitor-2014-platforms-and-policy/sopa-lives-copyrights-existing-power-to-block-websites-and-break-the-internet-5b5a76ec6ff5) • Susan Benesch, author of "Flower Speech: New Responses to Hatred Online" (https://medium.com/internet-monitor-2014-public-discourse/flower-speech-new-responses-to-hatred-online-d98bf67735b7) • Nathan Freitas, author of "The Great Firewall Welcomes You!" (https://medium.com/internet-monitor-2014-international-issues/the-great-firewall-welcomes-you-c58e366def6b) • Sara Watson, author of "Dada Data and the Internet of Paternalistic Things" (https://medium.com/message/dada-data-and-the-internet-of-paternalistic-things-7bb4321d35c4) • David Michel Davies, of the Webby Awards on their recent report "Understanding the Sky-High Demands of the World’s Most Entitled Consumer" (http://www.slideshare.net/TheWebbyAwards/at-your-service-the-webby-awards) We also mentioned: • Randall Munroe's XKCD chart "Stories of the Past & Future" (http://xkcd.com/1491/) This episode features Creative Commons Music from: Berdan Chad Crouch (http://podingtonbear.com/) Learning Music Monthly (http://freemusicarchive.org/music/Learning_Music/An_End_Like_This/04_Ovulation) Timo Timonen (https://soundcloud.com/timotimonen/timo-timonen-shadow)

Not long ago, illegally downloading a movie could land you in court facing millions of dollars in fines and jailtime. But Hollywood has begun to weather the storm by offering alternatives to piracy — same day digital releases, better streaming, higher quality in-theater experiences — that help meet some of the consumer demand that piracy captured. But the porn industry is not Hollywood. While the web has created incredible new economic opportunities for adult entertainers — independent production has flourished, as well as new types of production, which we won’t go into here simply to preserve our G-rating — few other industries on the web face the glut of competition from services that offer similar content for free or in violation of copyright. Simply put, there’s so much free porn on the net that honest pornographers can’t keep up. It’s hard to get accurate numbers on how much revenue is generated from online porn. It’s believed to be in the billions, at least in the United States. But it’s even more difficult to get a picture of how much revenue is lost in the adult entertainment industry due to copyright violation. Surprisingly though, the porn industry doesn’t seem that interested in pursuing copyright violators. Intellectual property scholar Kate Darling studied how the industry was responding to piracy, and it turned out that — by and large — adult entertainment creators ran the numbers and found that it simply cost more from them to fight copyright violators than it was worth. For today’s episode, Berkman alum and journalist Leora Kornfeld sat down with Kate Darling to talk to her about how porn producers are losing the copyright battle, and why many don’t care.

Not long ago, illegally downloading a movie could land you in court facing millions of dollars in fines and jailtime. But Hollywood has begun to weather the storm by offering alternatives to piracy — same day digital releases, better streaming, higher quality in-theater experiences — that help meet some of the consumer demand that piracy captured. But the porn industry is not Hollywood. While the web has created incredible new economic opportunities for adult entertainers — independent production has flourished, as well as new types of production, which we won’t go into here simply to preserve our G-rating — few other industries on the web face the glut of competition from services that offer similar content for free or in violation of copyright. Simply put, there’s so much free porn on the net that honest pornographers can’t keep up. It’s hard to get accurate numbers on how much revenue is generated from online porn. It’s believed to be in the billions, at least in the United States. But it’s even more difficult to get a picture of how much revenue is lost in the adult entertainment industry due to copyright violation. Surprisingly though, the porn industry doesn’t seem that interested in pursuing copyright violators. Intellectual property scholar Kate Darling studied how the industry was responding to piracy, and it turned out that — by and large — adult entertainment creators ran the numbers and found that it simply cost more from them to fight copyright violators than it was worth. For today’s episode, Berkman alum and journalist Leora Kornfeld sat down with Kate Darling to talk to her about how porn producers are losing the copyright battle, and why many don’t care.

Most of the spectrum of frequency that exists in the US is occupied or owned by large wireless corporations, cable companies, by the government. But at least one small chunk of spectrum — “low-band spectrum” wireless, or TV white spaces (so-called because it is the space between the television dials) — has been somewhat open to the public. There are thousands of devices on the market that take advantage of this spectrum without paying a license fee, allowing consumers to transmit bits without interference from walls, trees, or radiation from devices like microwaves. But the Federal Communications Commission is now deciding whether to auction off this spectrum to the highest bidder, putting at risk not only billions of dollars in economic activity, but also very fundamental concepts of affordable public access to information spaces. And on May 15th, just a couple days away from this podcast, the FCC will be holding an open meeting to discuss whether auctioning off this spectrum would be a good idea. Harold Feld, senior vice president for Public Knowledge, recently sat down with David Weinberger to talk about why we should be concerned about auctioning off this spectrum.

In January of 2012 a British mathematician posted a humble invitation on his blog for fellow academics and researchers to join him in boycotting the prestigious research publisher Elsevier. Citing high prices, exploitative bundling practices, and lobbying efforts to prevent open access to research, the mathematician publicly denounced Elsevier and refused to do business with them in the future. Eighteen months later almost 14,000 researchers have joined the boycott of Elsevier, kicking off what’s been referred to as the Academic Spring movement. But despite the effort, closed academic journals continue to be a frustration for professors and researchers in the digital age. Alternatives to closed journals are becoming more common, but growth is slow, and some fields are more welcoming to open access than others. Enter Academia.edu, a topic agnostic platform for researchers to share their work, connect with peers, and present an entire corpus of their research, completely open and completely free. Today’s guest Richard Price launched Academia.edu after encountering his own frustrations with the world of closed publishing as a student and researcher of philosophy. He recently spoke with David Weinberger about how the platform is facing up against for-profit journals.

Revelations of the NSA’s data surveillance efforts have raised serious questions about the ethics and necessity of violating privacy that have been bubbling under the surface for some time. Efforts to monitor communication are nothing new, but electronically mediated communication has increased the amount of information being shared, and the possibilities for eavesdropping are endless. But there’s a trade off. People tolerate incursions into privacy for greater security or even convenience: health care, transportation, public safety, or any number of web utilities we use on a daily basis. Bruce Schneier is an author, Berkman fellow, and security technologist. He recently sat down with David Weinberger to talk about the positives and perils of privacy violation.

As high school and college students transition into a knowledge economy they face both advantages and challenges with how they find information and engage with co-workers as teammates. As a recent study of US employers and recent college graduates discovered, some young hires are pretty good at finding out information online and through social networks, but experience significant difficulty with traditional methods of finding answers — going through bound reports, picking up the phone, or researching with groups. The study, How College Graduates Solve Information Problems Once They Join the Workplace, was conducted by Project Information Literacy, and part of a series of studies supported by the Berkman Center and the Institute for Museum and Library Services to discover how research behavior is changing. David Weinberger spoke with Berkman Fellow and director of Project Information Literacy Alison Head about her research.

What if you could witness a crime taking place from space, and even step in to prevent it? A group of researchers at Harvard’s Humanitarian Initiative are trying to do exactly that. As the nation of Sudan faced a complex crisis — a secession of the southern region that threatened to boil over into a civil war in 2011 — Nathaniel Raymond and his team at The Signal Program were carefully monitoring the conflict. Their methods were uncommon. Using donated satellite imagery — the kind normally used to observe environmental conditions or create maps — the team tracked the movements of troops, military vehicles, and resources in near real-time, and used that information to alert humanitarian groups on the ground. But it’s a process fraught with challenges, from imperfect imagery (imagine a cloud passing by just as you’re trying to spot tank movements), to the ethical questions that come with intervening in a conflict remotely. So how does a group of civilians at Harvard go about monitoring an unfolding humanitarian disaster from space? Our producer Frances Harlow spent a day with the team at the Signal Program to find out how they work.

How have politically engaged organizations used the web to fundamentally change how people organize and engage politically? Why are left wing organizations more likely to succeed in organization online? Why are conservatives less funny than liberals? David Karpf chronicles the dozens of Netroots political organizations, both progressive and conservative, that have sprouted up with the mass adoption of the internet in his new book The MoveOn Effect: The Unexpected Transformation of American Political Advocacy. On this 2012 election-themed episode of Radio Berkman he speaks with our host David Weinberger about how these organizations are having an impact on politics.

The Internet exists and persists on the border between helpful and harmful, between freedom and totalitarianism, access to knowledge and censorship. But as long as technology is adaptable activists will be learning and creating workarounds to spread information and promote change. Enter the Circumvention Tools Hackfest, a four-day bonanza of coders and freedom lovers gathered together to build and improve applications to help activists in repressive regimes get around censorship and surveillance. Correspondent Becky Kazansky attended the Hackfest to find out what kind of tools these “hackers” cooked up. As part of our new series — Drone Humanitarianism: Harnessing Technology to Remotely Solve and Prevent Crisis — she filed this report.

Disseminating knowledge was once a costly undertaking. The expenses of printing, distributing, and housing the work of researchers and scholars left most research in the hands of publishers, journals, and institutions in a system that has evolved over centuries. And the licensing model that has arisen with that system butts heads with the quick, simple, and virtually free distribution system of the net. The key to breaking free of the traditional licensing model locking up research is the promise of the “Open Access” movement. And the movement has already made significant strides. Over the summer the United Kingdom was enticed enough by the potential for greater innovation and growth of knowledge to propose Open Access for any research supported by government funds. But Open Access still remains a wonky, hard to understand subject. Today, Peter Suber — Director of the Harvard Open Access Project — shares insights with David Weinberger from his new guide to distilling Open Access, called simply Open Access.

Nobel Laureate and Economist Elinor Ostrom passed away last month at the age of 78. Best recognized for her research into the management of common pool resources, Ostrom broke new ground with her findings that Commons were not inherently tragic, as previous generations of economists believed. In fact, Ostrom found examples of communities that could effectively manage limited resources, like agricultural land or open space, to prevent resource depletion. Her work paved the way for researchers studying internet communities to explore how norms are established and cooperation is achieved. On today’s show Berkman researchers and affiliates Benjamin Mako Hill, Judith Donath, Mayo Fuster Morell, and Oliver Goodenough discuss how Ostrom’s work impacted their lives.

If you’ve ever experienced the problem of a dead cell phone battery and only incompatible chargers within reach, you’ve experienced one of the minor frustrations of a non-interoperable system. This frustration — not to mention the environmental waste of having dozens of different charger types for the same class of device — has led some countries to institute regulations for cell phone manufacturers to use a single common standard. Such a structure is an example of an Interoperable System. And interoperable systems can range anywhere from relatively minor markets like mobile phone chargers, to massive infrastructures like smart energy grids or air traffic systems. Friends of the show John Palfrey and Urs Gasser are the authors of the newly released Interop: The Promise and Perils of Highly Interconnected Systems. They spoke with David Weinberger about how Interoperability works, and how interoperable systems can lead to greater innovation, greater efficiency, and better functioning societies.

Lots of digital ink has been spilled about how and whether digital technology played a critical role in bringing about the Arab Spring. But it’s been 18 months since the spark of revolution was first lit in Tunisia, way back in December of 2010. How has digital technology played a role in laying the foundation for a stable Tunisia? Today’s guests were tasked with finding an answer to that question. And it turns out to be a very complex and interesting one, leading them to explore Tunisia’s communications infrastructure, Tunisia’s digital economy, and an increasingly technology-enabled civil society. Zack Brisson and Kate Krontiris of Reboot are the authors of the recently completed TUNISIA: FROM REVOLUTIONS TO INSTITUTIONS.

The Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) — a U.S. House bill that would give the Department of Justice the authority to demand that ISPs block sites accused of hosting pirated content — seemed to be doing well. Nearly half of the Senate sponsored similar legislation that survived a committee vote. And people weren’t generally making a big deal about it. But on the week before Thanksgiving SOPA suddenly hit the front page after a particularly fraught House committee hearing on the bill. Battle lines became clear. Representatives of big content owners like the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) partnered with big brands and the US Chamber of Commerce in support of the legislation, saying it would protect millions of jobs. On the other side web entrepreneurs like Google, Twitter, and Facebook sided with Human Rights Watch and the Electronic Frontier Foundation against the bill, saying it would basically give corporations a legal path to censor any site that poses a competitive threat. And now it looks like the bill might have a harder time than legislators originally thought. But talk to the creators of intellectual property one on one and you’ll see that many don’t have a clear opinion on the bill. The open web has benefitted the work of artists, coders, and researchers alike, allowing them to share their work with new audiences and experiment with new business models for next to nothing. But many creators see that same technology as stealing food from their mouths when their work appears on torrent sites and uncredited on blogs. We spoke with two people this week to help get our heads straight on SOPA. The graphic artist Jim “Zub” Zubkavich worries about what piracy is doing to his career, but sees SOPA as a little draconian. And Julian Sanchez of the CATO Institute gives some idea of what SOPA will do if implemented, and the chance it might have of passing.

2011 has been a big year for quintuple threat actor/writer/comedian/rapper Donald Glover. For the last decade he released rap, remixes, and mixtapes on the web completely for free under the names Childish Gambino and MC DJ. Not just free of charge, but free of any kind of copyright notice or license. But over the summer Glover, now picking up notice for his smart rhymes, instrumentally organic sound, and indie sensibility, got signed to Glassnote records, home to big indie acts like Mumford and Sons and Phoenix, and has been hard at work touring, and preparing for the release of his first “for pay” album CAMP. Earlier this year we caught up with Donald to talk about where his musical inspiration comes from, and how he feels about the explosion of free music on the web.

Video games aren’t just, well, fun and games. When you pop open a video game — be it Farmville on Facebook for your smartphone or World of Warcraft on your $10,000 immersive gaming setup — you are entering into any number of different terms and conditions agreements about behavior and property that govern your playtime. But questions have started to arise as more and more games build the concept of virtual property into their play. New powers, levels, avatars, privileges — who do those things belong to, and under what jurisdiction do they fall? Greg Lastowka is a professor of law at Rutgers University and author of the book Virtual Justice: The New Laws of Online Worlds. Lastowka has given a great deal of thought to the virtual worlds of video games, and documented some of the cases where the laws of the game and the laws of real life clash, sometimes violently.

What would a digital version of your public library look like? There’s more to it than e-books and digital reading devices. Librarians, scholars, innovators, and techno-wizards are collaborating under the mantle of the Digital Public Library of America (DPLA) to build a next generation public library. Such a thing could incorporate one or more of many different elements: a set of physical buildings; a purely digital archive with an open API layer for coders to play around with; a full fledged digital lending library. And when the DPLA converge on the National Archives in Washington, DC this Friday (you can check out the agenda and tune in to a livestream here) they’ll get to work out just a few of those ideas. Today, a special report from Benjamin Naddaf-Hafrey who spoke to a few of the minds behind the DPLA.

It’s time to stop thinking about intellectual property as something purely for your legal counsel to deal with. That’s the driving idea behind John Palfrey’s aptly titled new book Intellectual Property Strategy. Companies and institutions that have to worry about creative works, trademarks, or brands would be well-suited, Palfrey says, to seize the sword and shield from the attorneys (who tend to be aggressive and/or defensive about IP) and exercise a little more flexibility and creativity with intellectual property on their own. Palfrey sat down with David Weinberger for this week’s Radio Berkman to talk about why.

Are human beings — as consultants, researchers, and the authors of business books have thought for years — fundamentally motivated by self interest? Or is there a deeper cooperative instinct that drives us to work? Those are the questions that fuel Yochai Benkler‘s investigation in The Penguin and the Leviathan: How Cooperation Triumphs over Self-Interest. In it Benkler challenges the rather embarrassing idea that people are primarily selfish by citing examples — from collective farming to neuroscience to the world’s richest corporations — demonstrating that people are a lot more cooperative than they get credit for. Benkler spoke with David Weinberger about his new book for this week’s Radio Berkman.

“Wikileaks” has become something of a neverending story. Coverage has branched out beyond the revelations of the documents allegedly leaked by Pfc. Bradley Manning in 2010, and on to ancillary territory: the flamboyant presence of founder Julian Assange; the legal propriety of Wikileaks’ actions; and the harsh treatment of Manning as a military detainee. These last two areas have garnered the attention of today’s guest. Harvard Law Professor Yochai Benkler recently co-authored a joint letter condemning the abuse of Bradley Manning that has since been signed by 295 scholars in the legal realm. He has also spoken out against efforts by government and private entities to stifle Wikileaks. While some have argued that facilitating the release of classified documents is unprecedented and perhaps illegal, Benkler has insisted that Wikileaks’ behavior is not only entirely constitutional, but also not exceptional. Moreover, he says, the private and governmental response to Wikileaks demonstrates an interesting insight into how networks do battle in the digital age. We sat down with Benkler this week to hear why.

In our last episode we talked about how artists can feel besieged from all sides. Fans, promoters, labels — when you’re talented and famous everyone wants a piece of you. Today’s guest is one of the most important people in a musician’s life. He’s the guy that keeps the vultures at bay, and makes sure the artists can focus on their music. He is The Manager. Michael McDonald is the founder of the boutique artist management company Mick Management, home to artists like Brett Dennen and Ray LaMontagne. One of Michael’s most popular artists, John Mayer, has gone from a small-time musician with a street team to a multi-platinum artist with an amazing fan interaction on twitter. John Mayer later abandoned Twitter (and nearly 4 million followers) when he decided it was too limiting. Michael talked with us about how artists experiment with promotion and social media (sometimes with mixed results), and how managers help deal with the demands placed on artists.

Musicians often feel besieged on all sides. Promoters, labels, publishers, radio stations, and venues can make an artist feel exploited and overwhelmed. But in the digital age it might feel like fans and fellow musicians are taking a bite out of them, too. Second to piracy the phenomenon of fan created content is the greatest irritation to professional musicians and their stakeholders. From the upload of a song to YouTube (which involves almost no creative effort) to sampling, remixing or creating a fan-made music video — many artists feel fan initiatives show disrespect for their rights. And some are using the tools of PR and the law to make their voices heard. Jay Rosenthal is the General Counsel for the National Music Publishers’ Association with decades of experience working with music industry organizations on the legal side, and representing artists like Salt n Pepa, Thievery Corporation, and Mary Chapin Carpenter. We talked about professional musicianship, and what kind of threat sampling and remix projects (like Girl Talk’s “All Day” and DJ Danger Mouse’s “Grey Album”) pose to the music industry.